Paralyzed
by File 13
Summary: Tord never thought he'd never finish nursing school. He never thought he'd move out. He definitely never thought that he could possibly ever, ever fall for someone. That's what he gets for fighting one paraplegic. And even though he's the one with the legs, she's going to drag him on one adventure of a lifetime; a roller coaster ride most people call "love". *cover image not final*


**_Paralyzed_**

 _A Tord x Ell Story_

 _*You have been warned*_

"What's this new patient like?"

Those were his first words of the day, though he only realized it later. He tried to avoid talking most of the time, partially because he just wasn't one for talking a lot of the time partially because it was hard for people to understand the faint traces of a Norwegian accent, diminished because of his long years in America.

He was walking beside Patryck, who handed him the clipboard, white overcoat flapping a little around his legs as he scratched the stubble on his chin. "Not quite sure myself. I've only seen the girl a couple of times, and both times she was pretty bad. It's been a couple of days, so the infection should have the edge taken off of it by now, so we can hand her off to you guys now."

Tord shifted a little in his mint green scrubs, glancing once again over the clipboard. "Pneumonia?"

"Yes. And it led to…?"

"Parapalegia."

"Good job." Patryck nodded and turned into the elevator, Tord following close behind. "And what is paraplegia?"

"Paralysis of the lower abdomen."

"Very good."

"So she worked in a homeless shelter?" he continued to question.

"Yeah. There's been a lot of pneumonia cases recently, but she's been the worst so far. Again, she's doing a lot better, so we moved her out of the ICU into a normal room, but there's going to be some repercussions. So far, the paralysis has been permanent, so we're going to need to keep her in the hospital for at least a few more days while she still needs antibiotics, and then we need to teach the poor kid how to live without her legs."

"Hmm." Tord frowned, looking back at the clipboard as their elevator came to a stop on their floor. "So you just want me to be the caretaker?"

"Yeah." Patryck walked out of the elevator doors, down the hall towards room 216. "The poor kid needs something to keep her going too, so just be nice."

He knocked three times on the door and opened it. "Good morning Elaina, how are you?"

"Morning." Tord looked at the plump girl sitting in the hospital bed, a book in her hands and an empty tray on the table beside her. Tubing ran from her nose to the oxygen tank in the corner, and her face was pale, but her eyes were bright and friendly, a brown warmth emanating from a cold body. "Who's this?"

"Elaina, this is Tord. He is going to be your nurse for the next few days." Tord nodded curtly as Patryck gestured to him, still holding his clipboard. "He's going to be checking up on you every so often, and if you need anything, you be sure to ask him."

"Oh, okay then."

Patryck left the room, leaving Tord alone. He cleared his throat and looked back at the girl. "So, Elaina-"

"It's Ell."

"What?" he asked, taken aback.

"I'd rather be called Ell." Ell shrugged.

"Okay, Ell then." Ell smiled, making him grin weakly. "I'm going to be your nurse, like Dr. Dudulewicz said, so if there's anything you need, I'll be checking up on you."

"Oh, there is something I need."

"And what is it?"

"Firstly, what kind of accent do you have? I can't tell."

"I moved from Norway when I was 10."

"Oh! I like it, it sounds nice." Tord smiled a little awkwardly. "And second, will you fight me?"

"Excuse me?"

"Fight me? Please?"

Tord smiled a tiny bit. There really was something about this girl that made him smile. He glanced down at the clipboard.

 _Elaina Goulding, Female, Age 23_

"Well, Ell, I am not sure I can fight you," he said at last, tucking the notes under his arm and leaning up against the door. "You are a patient after all, but maybe some other time?"

"Deal." Ell leaned back against her pillows and reached for her book once again. He caught the title _Dear Star Boy_ before he closed the door behind him and took a long, deep breath. Something felt off today. Maybe it was the difference in soap brands that the dorms had had today. Maybe it was a changed ingredient in his morning coffee. Or maybe it was the fine black print on the clipboard under his arm that read "Guillain-Barre Syndrome", and "terminal paralysis".

And though he didn't know it, he was in for the ride of a lifetime.

}{

"'Morning, Tord," said the voice almost the moment he walked out of his room. The familiar warm brown eyes gazed long and hard at him as he stifled a yawn and stepped out of his realm of darkness into the sunlight. Edd smiled vaguely as Tord slumped heavily down next to him and began to pour a bowl of cereal for himself. "You seem tired."

"What makes you think that?" Tord yawned.

"Maybe the milk you're spilling all over the table?"

Tord looked down and swore, leaping to his feet as the milk spilled over the rim of the bowl, down the table, and into his lap, effectively ruining all chance he had of wearing the pair of scrubs. Edd laughed, not meanly though, and took a swig of Coke, smoothing his own green scrubs.

Edd Gould; roommate, jokester, artist, college student, nurse in training. Best friend. Tord didn't know what he would have been able to do without Edd many times in his life, from picking up his car from the auto shop to being the shoulder to cry on the night after a new mother in the ICU died under his care. Edd was one of those people who was a better friend he could ever deserve to ask for.

Just, not right now. Right now he was being a dipstick, snorting under his breath as he watched Tord struggling to daub at the stain on his pants in a fruitless effort to rescue them. He succumbed a minute later after finally realizing that there was just no way he was going to get the brown scrubs to look like he hadn't just peed in them.

So, he returned to the darkness of his room and returned a few minutes later wearing a mint colored set with a pattern of tiny anime kittens. Tord had an… Unfortunate addiction to manga, and his roommates had given him the pair of scrubs last Christmas as a gag gift. Just out of spite, he had worn them to his very next shift, which just happened to include the children's ward. And now they were the only clean pair he had in his closet at the moment.

Running his hand through his hair, he emerged once again to see that his other two roommates had joined Edd.

Matt was physically a ginger, though mentally he could have passed off as a blonde in the sense that he was less of a fiery ball of energy than he was vain and lacking in common sense. But he was nevertheless a relatively kind person, and, if one could deal with frequent selfies and Snapchat filters, a fun friend. Tord was slightly surprised to see him up this early. His floriculture classes didn't start until much later in the day.

Tom was a different case. Tord didn't exactly hate him, to be honest, though he certainly didn't like him nearly as much as he did Edd or Matt, but don't tell him that. They fought frequently, and Tom often disappeared to parties, showing up again at four in the morning without his keys, and having drunk more than a fish. One of the only reasons why Tord hadn't kicked him out in the beginning was only because he was Edd's friend. But otherwise, Tom was a decent person, and, as much as Tord hated to admit it, an awesome bass guitar player.

After a few minutes shared conversation, a couple bad jokes, and several sliced of toast, Edd and Tord both left for the hospital.

The hospital was about twenty minutes away from their apartment, though with morning traffic it was something more like 45. Then there was the hassle of parking, and the bore of forcing tired legs to move to the stairs and the doors, and the task of actually getting close enough to the head EMT, a heavy smoker named Paul, to get the daily schedule.

First stop on his list: Room 216.

He knocked on Ell's door. There was no answer, so he pushed it open. The room was dark, despite it being almost seven in the morning. The curtains were drawn so that only a chink of light could be seen filtering through the gap, lighting up the swirling, dancing specks of dust in the the air with a warm yellow.

Ell stirred in her bed and opened her eyes that were half-gummed with sleep. They flicked to the door, then to Tord, who smiled nervously.

"Good morning Ell."

"Heya, Tord…"

"I'm here to check up on you. Sorry I had to wake you."

"'S all good." Ell yawned and stretched, pushing herself up with her arms so she could look Tord in the eye, and for a moment, the sunlight caught hers, making them glitter and change, like a gemstone. He had only seen a topaz a few times at places like the mall, but it was the first thing that came to his mind.

He blinked. "I'm just going to check your blood pressure right now. I'll send in nurse Dominique after with some food."

"Okay."

She said nothing while he took her blood pressure, instead staring steadily at him with those amber jewels. It was slightly unsettling, and he left soon after.

He could think of nothing else all morning. Not while he was changing the pans in the geriatric ward, not while he was checking on little Randy in room 643, not when Edd passed him in one of the hallways with a couple other nurses, pushing a man with a bloody bullet wound, not at lunch ten minutes later. Those eyes followed him wherever he hid, wherever he went.

For three days, this went on.

And every day, every time he walked in there, she would smile. And every time he would walk in there she would be doing something. And every time he walked in there, she would ask him, with a voice full of light and life, from behind a book or under a mountain of pillows, to fight her.

"Is there anything else you need?" he asked for the last time one day. And as usual, she smiled, and she started to speak, and her eyes grew wide, and she started to cough. Wet, heavy, hacking, gruesome, brutal, awful, loud, whooping, terrible coughing that tore through something in his stomach, at something in his chest.

She leaned back with a pained sigh, tears dripping past the corners of her eyes, those jewel bright irises, and he leaned forward, smiling a little sadly. "I won't fight you," he said, smoothing her sheets and straightening back up, "Because I know that you would win."

He left in a daze, those watering eyes following him out. He looked at his phone screen, looking at the Wikipedia page without really seeing it as he sat in Edd's car, driving at last back home.

"Hey, Edd?" he asked into the dark, fuzzy silence.

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Promise you won't laugh?"

"Promise."

"Well… Have you ever met a person, and no matter what you do, you just can't seem to stop thinking about them?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, like, you know nothing about them. But they just kind of… Follow you, everywhere."

Edd turned and looked at Tord, brown into silver, and said, without an ounce of joking in his voice, "Tord… Do you think you fell in love?"

"You know I don't believe in love."

"Even when it's staring you dead in the face?"

"Love only exists in fairytales, Edward."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do."

"Uh-huh." Edd looked skeptically back at the road. "I think you're crazy."

"At least I don't go around thinking that fairytales are real."

"At least love isn't a fairytale." He glanced at Tord's phone, held limply in his lap before continuing, "And I'm pretty sure what you've got is sitting on your phone, whether you know it or not."

He looked down in surprise. And the words looked back at him, tiny, black, and glowing, florescent in the darkness.

" _Florence Nightingale Syndrome"._

}{

She thought she had woken up early enough today. She thought she woke up early enough that he wouldn't walk in on her snoring and drooling and gross and asleep. But she wasn't nearly that lucky.

Even so, he wasn't sitting there. She didn't see the honey colored hair styled so curiously they looked like devil horns and pulled back usually into a little ponytail. She didn't see the thin and nervous pale face, or the beautiful silver eyes that entranced her every time she looked at them, that unsuccessfully hid the mistrust in his heart, and the sense of longing.

What was there, however, was a still-warm cup of coffee, with a sticky note patterned with some cute little anime foods, a phone number, a name, and a single question.

" _Fight me?"_

 _(866) 740-4531_

 _~Tord_

}{

 _*Several Months Later*_

"My gosh, that movie was great," Ell laughed as they left the theater, holding her umbrella as the rain came tumbling down to the earth. Tord laughed and nodded his head in agreement, twirling the keys to his car as they made their way through the emptying parking lot.

"When that one guy jumped off the boat," he said with wide eyes reflecting the lights and the stars. "That was insane!"

"I know, right? And he pushed off that woman first?"

"What was her name?"

"I don't remember." Ell sighed before continuing. "So… Where to next?"

"Well…" Tord looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. Ell raised an eyebrow and cocked her head. His face was turning red. She hadn't seen him this flustered since their first date together. He licked his lips and looked down at her.

"Tord, what's wrong?"

"You lost a lot when you lost your legs…"

"Oh Tord, baby, we've been over this. I've moved on. It's okay."

"No, let me talk," Tord licked his lips once again, and turned to Ell fully. He towered above her and her wheelchair, taking her hand in both of his own and gripping it tightly. "Ellie, you lost a lot when you lost your legs, and… I don't know, I guess I was kind of missing something too. But I've never been so happy in my life than when we've been together, and I… I want to give you something in return for all the happiness you've brought me."

"Tord, what are you saying?" Ell asked, heart fluttering.

He smiled and knelt in front of her. "Elaina Goulding, I am absolutely, positively, ridiculously, head over heels in love with you. And I want to know one thing. Will you make me the happiest man alive and marry me?"

The umbrella fell to the wet asphalt from numb fingers as she screamed her answer at him over and over and over again, tears mixing with the rain, as they two flung their arms around one another. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"

Tord was laughing and sobbing just as much as she was, face buried in her neck and lifting her from the wheelchair, spinning her around and around in his ecstasy.

The spinning slowed to swaying after a few moments, the two of them silently crying and grinning on one another's arms, the shorter of the two held up by the taller as he turned in an awkward dance, and whispered into her ear, slipping a tiny, glittering ring onto her finger.

" _Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars_

 _Pointing me on my way into your loving arms_

 _This much I know is true_

 _That God blessed the broken road_

 _That led me straight to you…"_

* * *

 **A/N I... Don't even know anymore. I need to get a life or something, I dunno, I just liked this idea. I think I strted writing it coz I read "Dear Star Boy" a while back, and then I read some sort of "Imagine your OTP" prompt, i doN'T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE HALP. I'm gonna post some artwork sometime, coz that's what this originally was going to be, was a series of drawing, but... So... Yeah. I'm done.**

 **Bye, I guess...**

COVER IMAGE NOT FINAL, THAT WAS A "DEAR STAR BOY" FAN ART. GO READ IT, THE FEELZ HURT

 ** _"God Bless the Broken Road" by Rascal Flatts_**


End file.
